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University and college students catch a break on monthly London Transit fares. High-schoolers should too, says one school trustee who plans to drive the issue in front of the London Transit Commission and council candidates.

A discounted monthly pass for teenage riders would make sense for students and their parents, said Matthew Reid, a trustee for the Thames Valley District school board and a former student trustee with the board.

It would get them hooked on being transit users instead of relying on car transportation, he said.

“It would open up the whole city for them.”

He said many high school students have asked him to advocate on their behalf and he hopes to introduce a motion at the school board soon before putting the issue before city council candidates.

Many high-schoolers attend school outside of the area where they live and aren’t eligible for school busing, Reid said, “and a lot of them turn to the LTC. But there’s no discounted bus pass for them or any economical way to get around the city.”

Western University and Fanshawe College students pay $210.38 for a 12-month pass — less than $18 a month — while an unlimited-ridership pass for most other Londoners costs $81 a month.

But London Transit general manager Larry Ducharme said all post-secondary students pay for their annual passes — “those who don’t use it are subsidizing those who do use it,” he said — and that’s what makes it financially feasible.

Ducharme said just 700 high school students bought the two-month, all-access summer passes available to them for $81.

That, he said, means it’s not discounts that are the determining factor of their ridership but that the service doesn’t meet the students’ needs in other ways. “Pricing will not be so much of an issue as quality of service.”

He said the LTC is working to make service convenient, reliable, predictable and accessible.

The bottom line is that fare pricing still needs to make economic sense, Ducharme said.

Seniors and blind people pay discounted fares but they are supported by the city’s top-up equalization grants.

If that were to change, the LTC would have to shift to social pricing, in which students — and people who are unemployed, under-employed or on social assistance — would need to undergo a means test to qualify for a subsidy.

“I take the city bus to and from school,” said Ruhmaa Bhatti, a Laurier secondary school Grade 12 student.

She said a part-time job next semester means she’ll ride the buses even more often and a special ride-all rate would make her bus riding make a lot more sense.